Perceived support, social undermining, and emotion: Idiosyncratic and shared perspectives of adolescents and their families

Self-report measures of perceived social support and social undermining con sistently have been linked to mental health, Such measures of social relati ons reflect both shared social reality and respondents' idiosyncratic perce ptions, and each of these two components can, have different relations to o utcomes, This study investigated the extent to which the shared and idiosyn cratic components of support and undermining were related to emotion. A cli nical sample of 50 adolescents and their family members completed measures of perceived social support and undermining in the family, social desirabil ity, and positive and negative affect. Shared social reality and idiosyncra tic perception had different links to emotion depending on the social const ruct and the emotion. For social understanding, both shared perceptions and adolescents' idiosyncratic perceptions independently, predicted negative a ffect. For perceived support, only adolescents' idiosyncratic perceptions p redicted positive affect. Consistent with prior research, support was prima rily associated with positive affect, whereas social undermining was primar ily related to negative affect.